Unified Theory

Posted by Jochen Fromm-3 on Jun 08, 2006; 1:56pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FW-SFI-Seminar-Complexity-Parallel-Computation-and-Statistical-Physics-tp521927p521968.html


I heard about ideographic vs. nomothetic in a lecture
about sociological theory, but I didn't know that Kant
coined these terms. This is indeed what I meant with
historical vs. regular behavior (exceptional vs.
expected events) - the contrast betwen narrative, descriptive
and irreducible explanations on the one hand vs.
predictive, comparative and compact explanations on
the other hand.

The sentence "human agents are telic, they organize around
imagined future states" sounds interesting, can you
explain it a bit? I also like the lens metaphor (a social
theory as a conceptual system through which people see how
their world works in a different way). If we use this
metaphor, the original question was if there is a
lens to see the whole system.

Probably you are right, the most promising route seems
to be to identify common processes of interaction.
Yet perhaps the basic common processes of social interaction
are already known and carry well-known names:
Power, Freedom, Authority and Domination (Weber's "Herrschaft"),
Discipline, Peace, Solidarity, Commitment, Progress, Conflict,
Resolution, Resistance, Rights, Obligations, Conformity,
Innovation, Association (Weber's "Verband")

The interesting thing about all these abstract concepts is
that they become concrete, observable and measurable phenomena
in Multi-Agent Systems. Max Weber for example defined power,
authority, discipline, etc. in concrete terms of social
interactions among persons (i.e. individual agents),
for instance in the case of "Macht" (power)
"Macht bedeutet jede Chance, innerhalb einer sozialen
Beziehung den eigenen Willen auch gegen Widerstreben
durchzusetzen" (power is the chance of an "agent" to
realize the own will in a social action even against the
resistance of others "agents").

-J.